Video of the Moment #188: the xx
So I confess…yes, I travelled to Boston, Massachusetts (a good 300+ miles northeast of Washington) last week to see the xx and Friendly Fires (gig review coming soon). What made this trip even better: an in-store performance by the xx at Newbury Comics, part of a New England chain of stores that sell yup, you guessed it, comics, but also CDs, DVDs, and other alternative pop culture merchandise.
You don’t understand. D.C. never has in-stores. Unless you count book signings like the time Dan Brown showed up at some chichi bookstore in Georgetown to sign copies of the Da Vinci Code, these things just don’t happen in my neck of the woods. So when one of my good friends forwarded me information for the in-store starring the xx, I knew I had to be there. For one, I was positive it would be an intimate performance. (I just never would have guessed just how ‘intimate’ it would turn out to be.) And two, it was a performance just a couple hours before the band played as the opener at the Paradise Rock Club near Boston University.
Thanks to an equipment arrival delay, we were forced to wait outside for what seemed like forever in the cold Boston night. It took almost an hour after the original starting time for us to be let into the store. (Rather stupidly, I’d dressed in a thin corduroy jacket, thinking fashion over function. Never again!) Rather appropriately, the friends I had made while standing in the queue and I ended up standing right next to the Doctor Who and Harry Potter dolls and we spent the intervening time before the band came out to discuss the relative merits of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. It was somewhat uncomfortable being crammed into this tiny store, but I had a feeling all the discomfort in the world would be all worth it.
Unfortunately, my view for most of the in-store was obstructed for most of the performance because of several tall blokes in front of me, as well as a rather annoying girl who stood up on a staff ladder without any regard for the people behind her. I thought all hope was lost in trying to describe the magic that was created in that store last Friday night until I happened upon this video. Someone in the front managed to film ‘Nighttime’ and most of ‘Infinity’, the last two songs of the set. Humourously, ‘Taylor Lautner’ appears to be part of the band, hanging out behind Romy Madley-Croft. (If you were wondering, ‘Robert Pattinson’ was to the right of Oliver Sim.) Check it out and enjoy.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLNqA-4FpI[/youtube]
Set list
Intro
VCR
Basic Space
Islands
Crystalised
Nighttime
Infinity
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